Interviewing with your target MBA program is a real privilege, so preparing adequately is critical. When it comes time for you to ask the questions, however, will you be ready?

Rankings are often the first stop when applicants begin choosing their MBA targets. The rankings game has been dominated by four or five major players over the years but there is another you may not be considering, which may be worth watching.

Ranking the best business school programs by the percentage of MBA graduates entering media and entertainment industries (2018).

In prior years, we excluded USC Marshall from our entertainment and media ranking as it fell outside of the business schools regarded as top 15 by US News and Businessweek. However, given the overwhelming strength of Marshall's strength within the entertainment/media, we've updated our 2018 entertainment and media ranking to provide a more relevant assessment.

The latest MBA rankings from The Economist are out and people are understandably freaking out about some of the odd placements that you can find in their list. Poets and Quants has already done an impeccable job running all this down, so I am not going to try to repeat all the great work John Byrne already did. But you should definitely check out the P&Q piece on it. What I want to talk about is why I am happy P&Q ran that extensive post on those rankings (rather than dismissing them) and, indeed, why I am happy these Economist rankings even exist.

The Yale School of Management comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates) back into the energy industry with a job.

Michigan Ross is second, with Haas in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Yale reported, the SOM is the place to be if you're into energy and want to work for a related firm in the industry.

Michigan Ross (really?) comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2015) back into the real estate industry with a job.

Stanford GSB is close second, with Yale SOM in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Ross reported, Michigan is the place to be if you're into real estate and want to work for a related firm in the industry.

Entering 2015 school year, Duke Fuqua comes out on top when it comes to sending MBA graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2014) into the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries - 9% of its graduating class get jobs in these industries. Dartmouth Tuck, Wharton and MIT Sloan hold their own, coming in at 2nd, 3rd and 4th best.

UCLA Anderson comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2014) back into the entertainment & media industries. NYU Stern is respectable second, with Michigan Ross a surprising third. Hands down, Anderson is the place to be if you're into entertainment and media and want to work for a related firm in the industry.

Today's blog post is a follow up to our Best MBA Programs in Finance ranking. It's also our attempt at ranking top MBA programs by industry and based on publicly available data. We've never felt completely comfortable with the rankings because (to our knowledge) the raw data that drives the rankings has never been fully disclosed. So we decided to start over and with the very numbers that the school's career centers are reporting via their respective employment reporting.

Rankings: Best MBA Programs for Finance Jobs (2015) - Amerasia's attempt at ranking top MBA programs by industry and based on publicly available data. Our motivation for doing this is quite simple - business school rankings differ quite drastically from publication to publication. We started with the very numbers that the school's career centers are reporting via their respective employment reporting. You need to see the end result first. In other words, what industries are hiring MBA graduates and from what schools?

Business school rankings are an attempt by different publications to apply a methodology to the various aspects of an MBA program. This methodology then allows for a fair (subjective) comparison between all the affected b-schools. Different publications place different weights on the varying aspects of each b-school program. Often these weights change from year to year within the same publication. With the same publication, this leads to the inability to accurately compare schools from year to year. Across numerous publications, this just leads to confusion. For instance, some publications will rank Harvard “number one”, while others won’t even have it in the “top ten”. Is it possible for a b-school to change so much in one year? Not likely. As stated above, it’s most likely the publication.

So who can you rely upon? The two most consistent b-school rankings have come from “US News and World Report” and from Business Week. Business Week issues their ranking every other year, while US News issues them every year. Every other year is probably a good policy as b-schools, containing a certain amount of institutional memory, really don’t change too much from year to year. The top ten schools have very little turnover in these two polls. You can argue with their methodology but at least you know what you are going to get. These two heavy-hitters are the ones that everyone refers to and the only ones that that the business world really seems to care about with respect to bragging rights.

Other publications offer their own shot at rankings the b-schools with mixed results. Forbes gives theirs, the WSJ, the Economist and the Financial Times all have their own. These should be considered the second tier of b-schools rankings. Although these publications’ rankings may be totally legitimate with respect to methodology, they are not paid as much attention to as US News and Business Week because they are not as consistent. When these publications drop a Harvard or University of Chicago from their “top ten”, the methodologies that produced these incredulous results tend to lose, well, credibility. Question any ranking publication that has a school in the top ten one year and then in the 20s the next year. No school changes that much.

All this being, why should you even pay attention to the rankings? Why should it affect your decision to go to b-school? Simply put, perception is reality. Think about it, when you go to get that big banking or consulting job out of b-school, the big banks or consulting firms want the prestige that is associated with the top schools. They want that prestige and they are willing to pay for it. This is why recruiters also love candidate from the top 15 schools in the world. These top schools produce, maybe not the best candidates, but the most prestigious candidates. Usually, the top school’s produce the best and the most prestigious candidates. These students get paid the top dollar and their employer now has bragging rights.

Thus, the bottom line is that, love them or hate them, rankings do matter.